Of Jeff, Nick and the Taming of the Tumbeast
by backtoavalon
Summary: Jeff and Nick are on their sixth year at Hogwarts, when Jeff finds a rather curious creature that might turn their lives upside down.
1. First Meeting

**Author's note:** Hi! First of all I'd like to say that this fic was inspired by this awesome drawing here: .com/post/4017057075/gryffindor-riker-jeff-ravenclaw-curt-nick-in, so creditis for the amazing person who did that. Also, I don't own Glee nor Harry Potter, they belong to Fox/Ryan Murphy and J. K. Rowling.

I hope you all enjoy the story and forgive if I let any errors pass (I don't have a beta and English is not my first language).

Good reading!

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**First Meeting**

Jeff was half his way to the castle, he had gone to Hagrid's house to deliver a late essay on the proper ways of feeding Blast-Ended Skrewts, when he saw something moving on the grass, he figured it was some kind of small animal running. At this moment, the movement stopped. Jeff stepped up in the direction where he thought the animal was, as a result of which, the animal started running again, but it did not go far.

Jeff reached for his leather school satchel and took a piece of the chocolate cauldron, which he had bought that weekend on Honeydukes, than knelt on his right knee. "Hey there, little one, come here," he whispered. "I've got some chocolate for you, c'mon." He slowly stretched his hand forward, showing the piece of chocolate he was holding, the small animal moved a little towards him and he saw a flicker of green fur, just a little darker than the grass itself, he stretched his hand even further, but not too much in order not to scare the creature.

Two big, round and curious eyes appeared as the mysterious animal slowly approached the blond boy in Gryffindor robes, suddenly it quickly closed the space left between it and the piece of chocolate, took a bite and went to hide in the grass again. Jeff only saw it for a second, but could tell it had a big mouth and a set of sharp teeth, though it had not hurt his hand when it had bitten the chocolate.

"There is nothing to be afraid of," he told it. "I won't hurt you, see? I've got more of that." The animal came back, slower now, Jeff could see it was a quadruped, with greenish thick fur and pointed little ears. Its eyes were really big if compared to the rest of the body, but in a way that made it look cute. Jeff had never seen such creature before and wondered what its name was as it took another bite of the chocolate cauldron. 

"Hey, Nick!" Jeff was heading towards the Great Hall, to have lunch, when he caught sight of a pale, dark haired boy, a little shorter than him wearing Ravenclaw robes and immediately recognized his friend, who turned around at the sound of his name. "Look!" Jeff exclaimed, holding the creature he had found earlier that day up.

Nick looked surprised and puzzled. "Erm… Jeff, what exactly is that?" He asked, staring at the animal.

"It's a Tumbeast!" He explained. "Or at least, Hagrid says so. Apparently they are very rare, you know, I don't know where this one came from but I found it running around just outside de castle." After that first encounter with the creature, Jeff had shown it to Hagrid, the keeper of the keys and grounds of Hogwarts and Care of Magical Creatures teacher, who claimed it was a Tumbeast, a creature known by its ability to destroy things and bring chaos everywhere. Jeff thought it was funny and cute.

"Wow, I never heard of it," Nick said, still a little confused. "So, are you keeping it now?"

"Yeah, I think so." Jeff was looking at the little creature he was holding like it was a baby. "Isn't it cute?"

The Ravenclaw boy examined the creature, it did looked cute, except for its big mouth with sharp teeth, from which there was some spittle dropping, but he had to admit that the whole figure was rather funny. "I suppose so." He replied. "It looks a bit hungry though." Nick observed as the creature shifted itself in Jeff's arms, made a small growl and put its red tongue out. "Do you know what it eats?"

"No idea." The Gryffindor replied, giving a little shrug.

"Well. It's lunch time, let's see if we can find that out." And both of them resumed their walking towards the Great Hall, while several students shot them curious looks, many of them pointing to the strange creature.

They sat at the Gryffindor table , Nick opened his copy of _The Monster Book of Monsters _and started flipping pages as Jeff served himself with pieces of chicken and boiled potatoes with his free hand.

"I really don't know what it might eat, there's nothing in our textbook about Tumbeasts and‒" They heard a loud gulping noise and looked at Jeff's place, which was now completely empty, than they realized that the Tumbeast has its mouth closed for what seemed the first time that day. "Well, he certainly has a great appetite." Nick finished, looking shocked at the creature. 

Jeff had gone to the Gryffindor tower after lunch and left the Tumbeast at his dorm, with an enormous supply of chocolate bars to keep the creature well-fed. For a small animal, the Tumbeast seemed to have an unending appetite, during lunch, Jeff had served his plate five consecutive times and in all of them the creature had emptied it in less than five seconds.

He was now leaving the dungeons, where he and Nick had just had their Potions class and intended to go to the library to start the huge pile of homework they had. Well, Nick intended to do it, Jeff would be probably procrastinate and keep distracting his friend.

"Hey, do you think theTtumbeast is alright?" Nick started, rubbing his forehead. "I mean, I don't even know if we should be keeping him inside…"

"He will be alright, I left plenty of chocolate stuff in the dorm," Jeff explained. "And, you know, it was there, roaming around alone and now we are giving it food and a home, besides, he likes you."

"How can you possibly know that?"

"I don't know, I just… know it."

Nick laughed. "You know what Jeff? My life would be a lot less funny than it is without you around." Jeff blushed at this. An awkward silence followed Nick's statement but, for Jeff's relief, it was soon interrupted by a Gryffindor student who came screaming in their direction.

"Jeff! Could you, for Merlin's beard, control your damn pet?" Wes was livid with anger. "That thing is destroying our dorm!"

"Oh crap." Jeff and Nick looked at each other and started running at the same time towards the Gryffindor common room, followed by an exasperated Wes.

The sixth year's bedroom looked like it had been hit by a hurricane, sheets were everywhere but on the beds, all the curtains had been ripped off and the boy's pillows had bite marks and missing pieces, there was also parchment scattered all around the room. When the boys entered the now devastated area, the Tumbeast was running around with Jeff's potions book in its mouth.

"Holy crap!" Nick exclaimed as Jeff started chasing the animal around the room, Wes was still yelling about how irresponsible Jeff was and the Ravenclaw boy continued in state of perplexity.

"Hey! Could you two actually do something and help me catch it?" Jeff's efforts to get the animal were proving to be in vain, as the blond boy had not even touched the creature or his book yet. The Tumbeast went to hide itself behind Nick's legs, so the boy leaned down and held the animal.

"Like I said, he likes you." Jeff smiled at his friend. "We should call him Little Nicky."

Oh no, there's no way we are calling him that." The smaller boy said in horror.

"You two are not calling him anything unless you can control this beast, that's it." Wes said like he was a judge announcing a sentence, and dramatically left the room.

"Wes really needs to control his temper." Jeff said playfully.

Nick sat down on Jeff's bed, with the Tumbeast on his lap, and rested his head on his right hand. "Well, he is right, you know. We can't let it keep on destroying the common room." He said very low, petting the creature absent-mindedly.

Jeff looked at his friend, the sunlight coming through the window caressed the sitting boy's face and made him look like a painting that came to life, it was such a beautiful picture, his hazel eyes glimmering in the light with concern filling his gaze, that Jeff had the urge of hugging him tight and stepped forward, however, as his friend looked up at him, he stopped and simply said. "Well, we'll figure a way of taming it."

Nick smiled slightly and Jeff thought it had brightened the room a thousand times.


	2. Discoveries and Doubts

**Author's note:** Hi! So here is the second chapter, I hope you all enjoy it. Again, I'm sorry if I let any mistakes pass.

I don't own Glee or Harry Potter.

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**Discoveries and Doubts**

"I can't believe we're doing this." Nick complained as he and Jeff were walking through Hogwarts' corridors on Wednesday morning. The Gryffindor boy had the Tumbeast on his arms as they spoke, to which they still had not found a name, though Jeff still insisted in referring to the animal as Little Nicky, or a way to control its devastating effect.

"What I can't is to let him on the common room, you saw how mad Wes was. And you wouldn't agree on having it on the Ravenclaw commons either."

"Of course I wouldn't, it'll eat everything in there."

"That's why we have to take him to classes with us, this way we'll be able to keep an eye on him." Jeff concluded his explanation. The boys had agreed on taking turns to look after the Tumbeast and, since they didn't have much classes together, it was going to be with Jeff the whole morning until lunch, then it was Nick's responsibility to take care of the animal until Transfiguration class, which the boys shared.

"This means chaos, Jeff, chaos. I still don't know how I let you get me into these situations." Nick said, shaking his head as he turned in to a corridor on his way to his Arithmancy class.

Jeff laughed at his friend's drama and turned to his left, going to his own class. He knew Professor Graham would be mad if he saw that a student had taken a animal to the class, so, before entering the classroom, he carefully put the Tumbeast inside his school satchel in a way he believed it was comfortable and had air entering by the bag's opening.

The blond boy eventually entered the classroom and made his way to the last table on the right side of the class, where his friends, David and Trent were already sitting.

"Jeff, we've got Quidditch practice Friday at four, all right? Don't forget." David murmured.

"Friday also? Wes really meant it when he said we would work our asses off, didn't he?" Wes was the captain of the Gryffindor team, in which Jeff played as a chaser, and the boy was quite enthusiastic about it. He wanted to win the cup more than everything, and since he assumed the position of captain, he was making the team work really hard.

"Dude! What's that? Your bag is shaking." Trent suddenly exclaimed.

"Oh, it must be my Care of Magical Creatures' book, you know, that monster thing." Jeff lied, but discretely took a piece of chocolate out of his pocket and gave it to the Tumbeast, through a small opening on his satchel, who devoured it.

By the second period, Jeff had started to think that his plan was going really well and was pleased with himself. However, one should not jump to conclusions too quickly, for the next class proved Jeff wrong. It was History of Magic, a subject know as the most boring of all Hogwarts' subjects, and Jeff was almost sleeping while Professor Binns gave his lecture on the Great Rebellion of the Goblins when things started to get out of control. The Tumbeast was trying to get out of his satchel, so the boy put his bag on his lap, and tried to calm the animal down and feed it, but Jeff's efforts were in vain. The creature started gnawing the insides of his bag and biting all of his textbooks and suddenly it jumped to the desk and proceeded to bite the parchment with Jeff's notes, he started to pull it down, but he knew it was too late when he heard Professor Binns' annoyed voice.

"Mr. Mitchell, could you please tell me what are you doing?"

* * *

"Dude, what's the problem? I should be in Potions class right now." Nick stormed through the bathroom door. He and Jeff had found a way of communicating when they were not together, they had bought a couple of enchanted pieces of parchment at Zonko's in which everything you wrote in one of the pieces appeared on the other, so the Gryffindor boy had wrote to his friend saying that they had an emergency and should met at the second floor bathroom. Jeff didn't say anything when Nick entered the room; instead he held his school satchel up, showing it to his friend as an answer.

"Oh Merlin, what do we do now?" Nick sighed, throwing his arms up in frustration.

"I don't know, that's why I told you to meet me here." Jeff said. "We can't let him in the common rooms and he pretty much follows us everywhere now also… And I got a detention."

"What? Why?" The dark haired boy asked.

"Professor Binns saw him gnawing my parchment and said I shouldn't walk around with these beasts and should not bring one of them to class either."

At this moment the boys heard a sharp cry coming from a bathroom stall across from where they were standing. Both of them fell silent, wondering who could be there why the boy was crying. While they thought of this, a ghost appeared, coming from the door of said stall, it turns out that it was not a boy, but the ghost of a girl. And they knew very well who this girl was.

"Moaning Myrtle?" Nick asked. "I thought you only stayed at the girls' bathroom."

"I used to. Until I discovered that the boys' bathroom was much more fun." She replied with a high pitched laugh at the end of the sentence. Nick and Jeff looked at each other, with their brows furrowed. "What's that?" The girl asked, coming close to Jeff, in a way he could only assumed she was trying to flirt with him.

"Oh, it's a Tumbeast." He answered taking a step back away from the ghost girl.

"Anyway," Nick started, trying to focus on what they had to do and ignore the awkwardness of the situation. "We still need to figure out what to do with it, or find a place we can let it where it won't destroy everything."

"You need to hide something?" Myrtle asked. "You could use the Room of Requirement, they it's very useful when it comes to that."

"The room of what?" Chorused the boys. 

The Room of Requirement was located on the seventh floor and its hidden doorway was in the opposite side of a tapestry portraying Barnabas, the Barmy in his attempt to teach trolls ballet. According to what Moaning Myrtle had told the boys, they were supposed to walk past it three times thinking of exactly what they wanted the room to be and the door would appear, revealing what they had asked for. Nick and Jeff did as they were told; once they made sure they were on the right spot, the boys walked past the entrance three times asking for "a safe place to hide the Tumbeast" and then stopped watching the rock wall.

Slowly, a wooden door started gaining form in front of them, the boys watched marveled as it solidified itself in front of them, Jeff stepped forward and turned the doorknob. The boys entered the room and discovered an ample space with soil and leaves on the floor, for some strange reason there were lots of parchment pieces and metal unrecognizable objects spread all around the place, there were also enormous windows so there was plenty of light entering the room. The Gryffindor boy closed the door and released the Tumbeast, which started running around excitedly.

"Wow… Well, he looks happy here." Jeff said, still looking around the place with big eyes.

"Let's just hope it remains like that." Nick said, but laughed seeing Jeff and the animal's excitement.

Jeff knelt down, calling the animal. "Do you like it here? Hey, Little N., do you like it?"

"Hey, I told you we were not calling him that!" Nick protested.

"But it's cute."

"No, it's not. I've decided, I'm going to call him impairer from now on."

"What?"

"Yeah, cause he's always impairing things." Nick explained. "And it is a much better name than Little Nicky."

"I still think that my name is cuter." Jeff teased and saw his friend glaring at him with a look that could only mean _'you're dead if you keep doing this'_, so he decided it was best to give up, or at least to let Nick think he had given up. "Okay, I'll stop calling him Little Nicky. Are you happy now?" 

For the next couple of days it seemed that indeed they had found a solution for the problem of the Tumbeast. Every free period the boys had during the day, they used it to visit the animal, which seemed very happy in the Room of Requirement. They discovered it had a strange appetite for things such parchment and metal objects, However Jeff and Nick would still bring it all different kinds of food from their meals. Friday night Jeff had Quidditch practice, but agreed to meet Nick right after it so they could spend sometime in the Room of Requirement with their little pet.

"…and then we're going to kick Slytherin's ass." Jeff was talking excitedly about the upcoming Quidditch match as he and Nick made their way to said room.

"Yeah, that's definitely going to be fun to watch. Really, those Slytherin guys need that, they're so full of themselves."

"Oh, Wes told me that Lincoln and Steven were mocking you because you're bi during Herbology." Jeff started, speaking more quietly now. He knew that was a delicate subject, it had been already difficult enough for his friend to assume his sexuality, and those idiots were only making his life harder. Jeff felt so angry, he wanted to punch Lincoln and Steven when Wes had told him what they'd said to Nick, but he knew that would not take to anywhere, except a detention. "But, you know, you shouldn't listen to them." He continued, taking a hand to his friend's shoulder. Nick looked so upset, and was looking down, but smiled slightly when he felt Jeff's touch. "They're just scared of who is different from them, just ignore what they say."

"I know. Thanks Jeff, it's really great to have a friend like you, I mean, you were the first straight guy who wasn't so sacred I would hit on you to even come and talk to me." Jeff felt his insides tighten when he heard that, was he really straight? He hadn't been so sure of that lately, and the boy standing right in front of him was the reason of all that questioning. If he only had the guts to tell Nick that, but instead he just smiled and said "Yeah, that's what friends do."

In spite of Jeff's worlds, Nick looked more scared than ever now, his mouth was hanging open and he was looking in horror to something behind the Gryffindor boy. Jeff turned around, puzzled, and saw what had caused that reaction on his friend. The door of the Room of Requirement was visible and on the bottom of it there was a hole, with gnawing marks on its borders.

"Oh no."

"We need Hagrid. Now."


End file.
